1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a variable speed transferring device for a cigarette wrapping apparatus, and more particularly to a variable speed transferring device for a cigarette wrapping apparatus, in which device a speed variable transferring drum, which changes the rotational speed of the variable speed transferring device during one revolution, is disposed between cigarette parallel-arranging drums and a cigarette piling drum such that the peripheral speed of the cigarette parallel-arranging drums is reduced and the peripheral speed of the piling drum is increased.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a cigarette wrapping apparatus is provided with a cigarette parallel-arranging device which takes out cigarettes from a hopper or the like containing cigarettes randomly arranges the cigarettes in parallel and piles them in three steps in a staggered manner such that, of twenty cigarettes to be packed in a box, seven, six and seven cigarettes constitute the lower step, the intermediate step and the upper step, respectively. The cigarette wrapping apparatus is further provided with a packing device for wrapping piled cigarettes with aluminum foil or wrapping sheets. The cigarette wrapping apparatus is still further provided with a sealing device for attaching seals (sealing pieces, for example) to cigarette packages. The cigarette parallel-arranging device, the packing device and the sealing device are integrally connected to each other to form a cigarette wrapping apparatus. Cigarettes put in the hopper or the like are sent out from the cigarette wrapping apparatus as packed final products.
The cigarette parallel-arranging device is formed with cigarette supplying passageways whose number corresponds to the number of cigarettes in a box (twenty, for example). Many cigarettes put in the hopper are sent, one by one, into each of the cigarette supplying passageways in a state arranged in parallel. Each cigarette receiving drum receives cigarettes one by one from the respective cigarette supplying passageway. The cigarettes held by the cigarette receiving drums are transferred onto three cigarette parallel-arranging drums such that the cigarette parallel-arranging drums receive seven, six and seven cigarettes, respectively, for example, which form three parallel-arranged cigarette groups. These three groups of cigarettes are transferred onto a cigarette piling drum to form a block of twenty cigarettes filed in a staggered manner. The piled cigarettes are sent to the packing device and packed.
Recently, the speed of wrapping has been becoming higher and higher. Since the cigarette parallel-arranging drums make mere rotational movement, they can be operated at a higher speed. However, the cigarettes taken out of the cigarette supplying passageways are accelerated very quickly from the stationary state to the peripheral speed of the drums. Thus the cigarettes receive a large shock at a high speed at which the drums are driven, resulting in cigarette damage. Further, because the peripheral speeds of the cigarette receiving drums and the other drums must be equal in order to carry out the transfer of cigarettes therebetween, only the peripheral speed of the cigarette receiving drums can not be lowered. In this regard, the speed of the cigarette parallel arranging device is limited.